The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir (25 page)

I wrote my number on a cocktail napkin and handed it to him. He folded it carefully and pressed it into his pocket.

delete key = weapon of mass destruction

Tuesday, October 29

“It's been two hours already. Is it supposed to take this long?” I rubbed the searing lump on the back of my neck.

“I'm not sure,” Mom shrugged. “I've only done this once before.”

It was the flat blind following the visually impaired.

“I thought computers were supposed to save time.” I looked at the mess of disks, instruction manuals, and cables around the second monitor perched unstably on my bed. We both crouched on the carpet in sweats, hunched over the project like mad scientists.

Around four in the afternoon, Mom began transferring the data on my hard drive with a cable from my old computer to the new one. My Cro-Magnon version software and Stegosaurus bone hardware had finally become extinct. Okay, so I admit, I'm a complete technotard and when it comes to gadgets, I'm not exactly screwing at the top of the pile in a technology orgy.

For an early Christmas present, Mom bought me a new species of PC with tons of great features that I didn't even know how to use.

I looked up to see Josh leaning in the doorway with an amused look on his face. “Need some help?” he asked.

From the age of seven, Josh had loved to disembowel old computers he scavenged from neighbors. My garage still held casing carcasses and a treasure box full of motherboards.

“No thanks. I actually need it to work.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “Yeah okay, whatever,” he said and wandered away.

Mom smiled, her silver hair disheveled from running her hands through the curls. “I think I've got it. I finished transferring all your data for your banking, recipes, photo files, and address book.”

“What about the rest?” I asked, peering over her rounded shoulder.

“Well, I just selected and highlighted all the files inside your ‘Writing Stuff’ folder. I wanted to do it separately because it's so big. Now, all I have to do is—”

The mouse pointer slipped from the copy key to the delete key under Mom's quavering touch.

Every little yellow folder instantly disappeared.

ALL FILES DELETED—popped to the center of the screen.

Mom's face crumpled and she burst into tears.

“Oh God!” The words choked past my heart, which had rocketed into my throat. My blood pressure shot up: full body flush, staggering dizziness. Fade to black was almost a physical reality. I grabbed the edge of the dresser for support and fought to keep the darkness from closing in.

Everything I'd written in the last six years.

My book. Scripts. Articles. Editorials. Essays. My thesis. Journal entries. The beginnings of a stage play. A 200-page grammar textbook project. Seminar and craft notes. All of my industry contacts and conversation logs. Gone.

“Tell me you have it backed up on a disk?” Mom's tears ran freely, her hands grasping at mine.

I think I'm going to throw up. “No,” I whispered. “I don't.”

Why didn't I have my files backed up? Blind faith in technology. Frugal, blue-collar sensibilities that balked at spending extra money for an external backup drive. The reason really didn't matter.

“It's okay, Mom. It'll be okay,” I said, not sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. “There's got to be a way to get it back.”

Her shoulders slumped, tears continued to zigzag down the lace of her parchment cheeks. “I'm so sorry.”

The idea popped almost audibly. “Norton Utilities,” she said, “I think it has a recovery wizard in the recycle bin.” Her voice gained strength. “I think it might work to get your data back.”

Mom launched the recovery function. One by one, each of my 467 files began to reappear on the screen.

I crossed my fingers: a clichéd, stupid superstition.

Finally, at ten o'clock, the recovery wizard prompted us to finish the last command. Then the screen froze. End task to black. No response. Warm reboot to blue screen.

CRASH.

It all went down.

The operating system crashed and now the files were unreachable, trapped inside a computer that could no longer be accessed.

Mom left an hour later, drained and feasting on self-reproach. I was still in shock. I didn't cry. Well, not sobbing anyway. Tears only filled and slid out of my right eye. Strange. I thought the left side of the brain controlled the right side of the body. And it was the right side of the brain that had everything to lose.

I slipped into a bubble bath scented with lavender oil, took a small fistful of Ibuprofen and washed them down with a cup of hot cocoa. A candle flame sent flickers of light dancing into the shadows while my muse curled in the far back corner of my mind. Crippled. Tight fetal position. Quaking in fear.

I'll never write again.

The bath water turned tepid. Chilled and shaking, I stared at the ceiling and continued my litany of unintelligible prayers.

8 miles of inspiration

Sunday, November 10

Josh and I sat in the dim theater listening to the music while the last of the movie credits rolled. For our mother/son date, Josh wanted to see
8 Mile
.

“So, where do you want to go for dinner?” I asked once we settled back into the car.

“Peppino's,” he said after taking a minute to think. “Can I have spaghetti with meat sauce? The big one, not the kid's one. And a salad, and some hot bread, and that brown vinegar in the oil on a plate?”

“Peppino's, it is.” I directed the car across town. “So, what did you think of the movie?”

“It was great.” He turned in the seat to face me. “I liked the part where Cheddar shot himself in the nuts. That was funny. But I thought it was sad when Rabbit forgot what he was going to rap. That's embarrassing.” He studied my face. “Did you like it?”

“I liked how hard he worked to make a better life for himself. I liked that he had a dream he pursued and a passion for his music,” I said.

There was more to it than I could explain to Josh. The movie resonated with me. I wasn't exactly the target demographic, but Eminem's song, “Lose Yourself
,
” could've been my personal theme when I decided to leave Fontana and move us to South Orange County.

It was a big step and I wasn't sure I could afford it, but he deserved to grow up safe. With plenty of opportunities. No meth labs. No trailer parks. No predators. The OC was like paradise—and culture shock. Maslow's theory executed. Our hierarchy of needs had moved from basic survival to success— with the help of a U-haul truck.

My thoughts kept me silent for the short drive. Josh sat hunched over his Gameboy, his thumbs tapping quickly on the buttons.

The hostess at the restaurant seated us at a table for two in the middle of the room. After we ordered, Josh's face turned serious. “Mom, what do you want me to be when I grow up?”

“Happy,” I answered without hesitation.

“No, that's not the right answer.” He shook his head. “I mean, what do you want me to
be?
A doctor? A lawyer? What?”

I dipped a crust of bread into the circle of balsamic vinegar on the small plate between us. “I want you to be whatever you want to be, as long as you're happy.”

“What if I want to be a rapper?” he said.

“Well, if that's your passion, then you better start practicing.” I covered my mouth with a cupped hand and began breaking down a beat with my lips.

Josh's eyes widened. He reached across the table and snatched my hand away from my mouth. “Mom! What are you doing?” His shoulders hunched, he glanced around the room to see if anyone heard my poorly rendered beatboxing.

“If rapping is really your passion, I'll help you pursue it any way I can,” I said.

The waitress brought our food and the conversation stopped while we ate. I twirled my fettuccini around my fork using a large spoon as a base.

Josh paused mid-shovel with noodles hanging from his fork only inches from his mouth. “But what if I don't have a passion?” His voice lowered in defeat.

I wanted to go around to his chair and hug him, but that would have embarrassed him too. “You're only thirteen. Don't be in such a hurry to grow up. You only have seventeen years to be a kid. You'll have more than seventy years to be an adult. You'll figure it out when you're ready.”

three's a crowd

Saturday, November 16

My cell phone rang. With my eyes still sealed shut with sleep, I fumbled in the dark to find it.

“Hullo?” I said.

“Hey buuuddy, what'r ya doin’?” a male voice asked.

I peeled one eye open and squinted at the clock. “Bryce? It's four in the morning and I'm sleeping! What the hell did you think I'd be doing?”

His laugh was half snort, half hiccup. “I got a verry serus queston fer you,” he said.

I sighed and braced myself for a long conversation. “What is it this time?”

“Could you do me a fayver?”

“Only if you promise to stop drunken dialing me. I swear, there should be some sort of public service campaign to keep you off the phone when you get like this.”

I'd met Bryce at the club just before summer. He was pickling his sorrows in imported beer and shots of Jack Daniel's. I spent the evening trying to talk him out of killing his liver over a girl. From there, we somehow formed a quirky lonely-hearts bond of phone support and text messages. Whenever either of us began drowning in self-pity, we called. Sometimes we'd talk for hours, sorting through our feelings. My emotional recovery was finally solid. Bryce still had a long way to go.

“I met a new grill at a bar t'night. I think she likes grills too. Would you have sex with us?”

“WHAT?”

“No, no. Shhhh. No. Wait. It'sssokay,” he said in hushed tones. “I don’ think yer attractive. But I think my new grill might like you…”

I sputtered and choked on a laugh. “Good night, Bryce.” I hung up the phone.

It rang a few seconds later. “Don’ say no right now, jes think 'bout it,” he urged.

“Good night, Bryce. I'm hanging up now.” I hung up, turned off my cell phone, and went back to sleep.

Consciousness finally arrived around eight o'clock. I rolled over and turned on my phone. Five missed calls. I listened to the messages. Each call featured Bryce trying a different tactic to persuade me to sleep with him and his most recent feminine acquaintance. I laughed out loud. All the calls had come in at approximately thirty-minute intervals, almost as if it took him that long to think up another reason for me to do it. It was sad, but it was funny.

A pathetic kind of funny.

The phone rang in my hands. I answered it without bothering to check the incoming number. “Listen closely.” I formed my words carefully, “I am
not
going to have a ménage à trois with you and some bar bimbo. So, don't even think that you can convince me to do it.”

There was a pause on the line. Then I heard Steven's smooth, mellow voice. “Actually, I was only planning to ask if you'd like to join me for lunch.”

I felt like I could've roasted marshmallows on the glowing embers of my face. I stumbled over a disjointed explanation about Bryce that sounded more like the plot to a kinky Japanese soap opera.

Steven finally suggested I tell him all about it on our date.

“Okay, but if I go out with you, you can't call it a date.”

the mominator

Monday, November 18

Josh came through the front door with a stormy expression on his face.

“Hey, Wonderboy, what's up?” I looked over the top of the
Writer's Digest
magazine I was reading.

“If I tell you, you have to promise you won't get mad.” Josh bargained like a game show host.

I straightened in the chair. “Just tell me.”

“Don't get mad, but I think I might have to get in a fight tomorrow.”

“With who? Why? What happened?”

Josh sat on the floor beside my chair with his head bowed. He picked at the rubber sole of his shoe. “A kid over at the McDonald's parking lot by the high school was doing burn-outs and screeching his tires and I told him he doesn't look cool, he just looks like a dumbass who has to buy tires a lot.”

A smile tugged at my lips. Scientific proof. Candor is hereditary. But the question remains, is it nature or nurture?

“I just wanted to tell you, so when I go over to visit my friends at lunch tomorrow and come home all beat up, you'll know why.”

I set the magazine on the side table. “First of all, you need to know when and where you can shoot off your mouth. I suggest you don't do it with boys who are bigger and older than you.” I stood up and patted the spikes of his hair. “Second, you're not going to get beat up.”